Chelsea v Aston Villa Match Thread

[Whiney MacWhineface]

We can be pretty proud of that half. Passion, fight and the majority of chances. Can we stop the game now?

[boboonthecorner]

Total utter incompetent refereeing, I doubt we will end the game with 11 players which will probably in turn cost us. If he gets punished after the game for a poor performance(which I doubt he will) he loses nothing.

[PaulWinch again]

Referee awful, but a lot better from us.

[villa1]

Much, much better. Massive improvement.

Ref's a card happy twat. Inconsistent with them.

[Mac]

Is Roman is paying Lee Mason per booking?

[Clark W Griswold]

Very impressive first half. Both were penalties. Collins still a liability, but the other 10 all looked good, some in different positions to their usual. Cause for optimism. Chelsea not great, but still better than plenty of teams we still have to play.

[JUAN PABLO]

I would give woeful downing 10 mins to improve , if not get Marc on for him.... 

[eastie]

No compaints about either pen as far as I'm concerned but worried by the bookings- if we finish with 11 men we can win this game!

[citizenDJ]

I really am reluctant to have too much of a go at refs as a rule, but this is an astonishingly poor performance, really shit.

As for us though, full marks! Great effort and energy, strong performances from Clark, Young and Heskey, and especially from NRC and Dunne. I have to say, I didn't think we'd see Dunne back, but he has been very good today and, thankfully, he looks about a stone lighter!

Great stuff, and if we can keep this up, we might even win it! Stranger things have happened!

[richard moore]

We will lose this because of the ref i cannot believe his bias towards them he's not even hiding it. How can Essien give away a pen with a lunge in the box and a blatant non attempt to go for the ball against Ash yet still not receive a card? Dunne's reaction after the pen got him a yellow why not Terry?

Absolutely what I was thinking whilst watching.

[Dave]

We've been good.

The referee has managed one of the worst performances I've ever seen.

Don't think Mason is getting the fouls wrong generally, it's just his card distribution is so biased. If we've merited 6 yellows then Chelsea have deserved 4 at least...

The Clark, Reo-Coker, Petrov and Gabby fouls were all fouls but only the Petrov and Gabby ones were bookings.

Whereas they should have Essien and Ferreira booked as well.

[villa_cads]

Good first half, shocking ref thought. A little consitency please. As much as I rate the kids, our possesion in midfield is much improved with some fist teamers in there. Reo-cokers distribution has been good. Keep it up!

Cue the red cards in the second half to turn the game around for chelsea.

[phantom limb]

Finally playing with a bit of confidence and passion. Let's not get people sent off though!

I also thought that their penalty was bullshit, ref needs to have a look at himself.

[KevinGage]

Bright opening half.

Soft penalty to them, but you half expect that. Looked messy from Collins but if that was at VP against Wigan or Bolton it wouldn't have been given.

Got our way back into it when in previous matches we've gone to pieces after conceding one. Part of that is down to how Chelsea have played, they haven't been at the races and look nervous.

We haven't really exploited that, some poor decision making in decent positions.

But concerning that we've already got 6 booked, we need to watch that as this doughnut will look to send one of ours off given a chance. We've done well eleven v eleven, I'm not sure I'd fancy our odds with ten or less.

[richard moore]

I would get Albrighton on for Downing second half at some point, depending on how things are going obviously. He could win us this if we have the courage to go for it...